IV
Piédelot was being burned alive. He was writhing in the middle of a heap of fagots, against a stake to which they had fastened him, and the flames were licking him with their sharp tongues. When he saw us, his tongue seemed to stick in his throat, he drooped his head, and seemed as if he were going to die. It was only the affair of a moment to upset the burning pile, to scatter the embers, and to cut the ropes that fastened him.
Poor fellow! In what a terrible state we found him. The evening before he had had his left arm broken, and it seemed as if he had been badly beaten since then, for his whole body was covered with wounds, bruises, and blood. The flames had also begun their work on him, and he had two large burns, one on his loins, and the other on his right thigh, and his beard and his hair were scorched. Poor Piédelot!
Nobody knows the terrible rage we felt at this sight! We would have rushed headlong at a hundred thousand Prussians. Our thirst for vengeance was intense; but the cowards had run away, leaving their crime behind them. Where could we find them now? Meanwhile, however, the captain’s wife was looking after Piédelot, and dressing his wounds as best she could, while the captain himself shook hands with him excitedly. In a few minutes he came to himself.
“Good morning, Captain, good morning, all of you,” he said. “Ah! the scoundrels, the wretches! Why, twenty of them came to surprise us.”
“Twenty, do you say?”
“Yes, there was a whole band of them, and that is why I disobeyed orders, Captain, and fired on them, for they would have killed you all. So I preferred to stop them. That frightened them, and they did not venture to go further than the crossroads. They were such cowards. Four of them shot at me at twenty yards, as if I had been a target, and then they slashed me with their swords. My arm was broken, so that I could only use my bayonet with one hand.”
“But why did you not call for help?”
“I took good care not to do that, for you would all have come, and you would neither have been able to defend me nor yourselves, being only five against twenty.”
“You know that we should not have allowed you to have been taken, poor old fellow.”
“I preferred to die by myself, don’t you see! I did not want to bring you there, for it would have been a mere ambush.”
“Well, we will not talk about it any more. Do you feel rather easier?”
“No, I am suffocating. I know that I cannot live much longer. The brutes! They tied me to a tree, and beat me till I was half dead, and then they shook my broken arm, but I did not make a sound. I would rather have bitten my tongue out than have called out before them. Now I can say what I am suffering and shed tears; it does one good. Thank you, my kind friends.”
“Poor Piédelot! But we will avenge you, you may be sure!”
“Yes, yes, I want you to do that. Especially, there is a woman among them, who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed yesterday. She is dressed like a lancer, and it was she who tortured me the most yesterday, and suggested burning me. In fact it was she who set fire to the wood. Oh! the wretch, the brute – Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my arms!” and he fell back panting and exhausted, writhing in his terrible agony, while the captain’s wife wiped the perspiration from his forehead. We all shed tears of grief and rage, as if we had been children. I will not describe the end to you; he died half an hour later, but before that he told us in which direction the enemy had gone. When he was dead, we gave ourselves time to bury him, and then we set out in pursuit of them, with our hearts full of fury and hatred.
“We will throw ourselves on the whole Prussian army, if it be needful,” the captain said, “but we will avenge Piédelot. We must catch those scoundrels. Let us swear to die, rather than not to find them, and if I am killed first, these are my orders: all the prisoners that you make are to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer’s wife, she is to be violated before she is put to death.”
“She must not be shot, because she is a woman,” the captain’s wife said. “If you survive, I am sure that you would not shoot a woman. Outraging her will be quite sufficient. But if you are killed in this pursuit, I want one thing, and that is to fight with her; I will kill her with my own hands, and the others can do what they like with her if she kills me.”
“We will outrage her! We will burn her! We will tear her to pieces! Piédelot shall be avenged, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!”
V
The next morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four leagues away. Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to mount their horses, nor even to defend themselves, and in a few moments we had five prisoners, corresponding to our own number. The captain questioned them, and from their answers we felt certain that they were the same whom we had encountered the previous day. Then a very curious operation took place. One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and nothing can depict our joy when we discovered what we were seeking among them, the female executioner who had tortured our friend.
The four others were shot on the spot, with their backs toward us and close to the muzzles of our rifles, and then we turned our attention to the woman. What were we going to do with her? I must acknowledge that we were all of us in favor of shooting her. Hatred, and the wish to avenge Piédelot had extinguished all pity in us, and we had forgotten that we were going to shoot a woman. But a woman reminded us of it, the captain’s wife; at her entreaties, therefore, we determined to keep her a prisoner. The captain’s poor wife was to be severely punished for this act of clemency.
The next day we heard that the armistice had been extended to the eastern part of France, and we had to put an end to our little campaign. Two of us, who belonged to the neighborhood, returned home. So there remained only four of us, all told: the captain, his wife, and two men. We belonged to Besançon, which was still being besieged in spite of the armistice.
“Let us stop here,” said the captain. “I cannot believe that the war is going to end like this. The devil take it! Surely there are men still left in France, and now is the time to prove what they are made of. The spring is coming on, and the armistice is only a trap laid for the Prussians. During the time that it lasts, a new army will be formed, and some fine morning we shall fall upon them again. We shall be ready, and we have a hostage – let us remain here.”
We fixed our quarters there. It was terribly cold, and we did not go out much, as somebody had always to keep the female prisoner in sight.
She was sullen and never spoke save to refer to her husband, whom the captain had killed. She looked at him continually with fierce eyes, and we felt that she was tortured by a wild longing for revenge. That seemed to us to be the most suitable punishment for the terrible torments that she had made Piédelot suffer, for impotent vengeance is such intense pain!
Alas! we who knew how to avenge our comrade ought to have known that this woman would find a way to avenge her husband, and should have been on our guard. It is true that one of us kept watch every night, and that at first we tied her by a long rope to the great oak bench that was fastened to the wall. But, by and by, as she had never tried to escape, in spite of her hatred for us, we relaxed our extreme prudence and allowed her to sleep somewhere else, and without being tied. What had we to fear? She was at the end of the room, a man was on guard at the door, and between her and the sentinel the captain’s wife and two other men used to lie. She was alone and unarmed against four, so there could be no danger.
One night when we were asleep, and the captain was on guard, the lancer’s wife was lying more quietly in her corner than usual. She had even smiled during the evening for the first time since she had been our prisoner. Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, we were awakened by a terrible cry. We got up, groping about. Scarcely were we up when we stumbled over a furious couple who were rolling about and fighting on the ground. It was the captain and the lancer’s wife. We threw ourselves on to them and separated them in a moment. She was shouting and laughing, and he seemed to have the death rattle. All this took place in the dark. Two of us held her, and when a light was struck, a terrible sight met our eyes. The captain was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with an enormous wound in his throat, and his sword bayonet, that had been taken from his rifle, was sticking in the red, gaping wound. A few minutes afterward he died, without having been able to utter a word.
His wife did not shed a tear. Her eyes were dry, her throat was contracted, and she looked at the lancer’s wife steadfastly, and with a calm ferocity that inspired fear.
“This woman belongs to me,” she said to us suddenly. “You swore to me not a week ago to let me kill her as I chose if she killed my husband, and you must keep your oath. You must fasten her securely to the fireplace, upright against the back of it, and then you can go where you like, but far from here. I will take my revenge on her to myself. Leave the captain’s body, and we three, he, she, and I, will remain here.”
We obeyed and went away. She promised to write to us to Geneva, as we were returning there.
VI
Two days later, I received the following letter, dated the day after we had left. It had been written at an inn on the highroad:
“My Friend:
“I am writing to you, according to my promise. For the moment I am at this inn, where I have just handed my prisoner over to a Prussian officer.
“I must tell you, my friend, that this poor woman left two children in Germany. She had followed her husband, whom she adored, as she did not wish him to be exposed to the risks of war by himself, and as her children were with their grandparents. I have learned all this since yesterday, and it has turned my ideas of vengeance into more humane feelings. At the very moment when I felt pleasure in insulting this woman, and in threatening her with the most fearful torments – in recalling Piédelot, who had been burned alive, and in threatening her with a similar death, she looked at me coldly, and said:
“‘Why should you reproach me, Frenchwoman? You think that you will do right in avenging your husband’s death, is not that so?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied.
“‘Very well then; in killing him, I did what you are going to do in burning me. I avenged my husband, for your husband killed him.’
“‘Well,’ I replied, ‘as you approve of this vengeance, prepare to endure it.’
“‘I do not fear it.’
“And in fact she did not seem to have lost courage. Her face was calm, and she looked at me without trembling, while I brought wood and dried leaves together, and feverishly threw on to them the powder from some cartridges, to make her funeral pile the more cruel.
“I hesitated in my thoughts of persecution for a moment. But the captain’s body was there, pale and covered with blood, and he seemed to be looking at me with large, glassy eyes, and I applied myself to my work again after kissing his pale lips. Suddenly, however, on raising my head, I saw that she was crying, and I felt rather surprised.
“‘So you are frightened?’ I said to her.
“‘No, but when I saw you kiss your husband, I thought of mine, of all whom I love.’
“She continued to sob, but stopping suddenly she said to me in broken words, and in a low voice:
“‘Have you any children?’
“A shiver ran over me, for I guessed that this poor woman had some. She asked me to look in a pocketbook which was in her bosom, and in it I saw two photographs of quite young children, a boy and a girl, with those kind, gentle, chubby faces that German children have. In it there were also two locks of light hair and a letter in a large childish hand, beginning with German words which meant: ‘My dear little mother.’
“I could not restrain my tears, my dear friend, and so I untied her, and without venturing to look at the face of my poor, dead husband, who was not to be avenged, I went with her as far as the inn. She is free; I have just left her, and she kissed me with tears. I am going upstairs to my husband; come as soon as possible, my dear friend, to look for our two bodies.”
I set off with all speed, and when I arrived there was a Prussian patrol at the cottage. When I asked what it all meant, I was told that there was a captain of francs-tireurs and his wife inside, both dead. I gave their names; they saw that I knew them, and I begged to be allowed to undertake their funeral.
“Somebody has already undertaken it,” was the reply. “Go in if you wish to, as you knew them. You can settle about their funeral with their friend.”
I went in. The captain and his wife were lying side by side on a bed, and were covered by a sheet. I raised it, and saw that the woman had inflicted a wound in her throat similar to that from which her husband had died.
At the side of the bed there sat, watching and weeping, the woman who had been mentioned to me as their last friend. It was the lancer’s wife.
HAUTOT SENIOR AND HAUTOT JUNIOR
I
In front of the building, half farmhouse, half manor-house, one of those rural habitations of a mixed character which were all but seigneurial, and which are at the present time occupied by large cultivators, the dogs, lashed beside the apple-trees in the orchard near the house, kept barking and howling at the sight of the shooting-bags carried by the gamekeepers and the boys. In the spacious dining-room kitchen, Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior, M. Bermont, the tax-collector, and M. Mondaru, the notary, were taking a bite and drinking some wine before going out to shoot, for it was the opening day.
Hautot Senior, proud of all his possessions, talked boastfully beforehand of the game which his guests were going to find on his lands. He was a big Norman, one of those powerful, ruddy, bony men, who can lift wagonloads of apples on their shoulders. Half peasant, half gentleman, rich, respected, influential, invested with authority, he made his son César go as far as the third form at school, so that he might be an educated man, and there he had brought his studies to a stop for fear of his becoming a fine gentleman and paying no attention to the land.
César Hautot, almost as tall as his father, but thinner, was a good son, docile, content with everything, full of admiration, respect, and deference for the wishes and opinions of his sire.
M. Bermont, the tax-collector, a stout little man, who showed on his red cheeks a thin network of violet veins resembling the tributaries and the winding courses of rivers on maps, asked:
“And hares – are there any hares on it?”
Hautot Senior answered: “As many as you like, especially in the Puysatier lands.”
“Which direction shall we begin in?” asked the notary, a jolly notary, fat and pale, big-paunched too, and strapped up in an entirely new hunting costume bought at Rouen.
“Well, that way, through these grounds. We will drive the partridges into the plain, and we will beat there again.”
And Hautot Senior rose up. They all followed his example, took their guns out of the corners, examined the locks, stamped with their feet in order to feel themselves firmer in their boots which were rather hard, not having as yet been rendered flexible by the heat of the blood. Then they went out; and the dogs, standing erect at the ends of their leashes, gave vent to piercing howls while beating the air with their paws.
They set forth for the lands referred to. These consisted of a little glen, or rather a long undulating stretch of inferior soil, which had on that account remained uncultivated, furrowed with mountain-torrents, covered with ferns, an excellent preserve for game.
The sportsmen took up their positions at some distance from each other, Hautot Senior posting himself at the right, Hautot Junior at the left, and the two guests in the middle. The keeper and those who carried the game-bags followed. It was the anxious moment when the first shot is awaited, when the heart beats a little, while the nervous finger keeps feeling at the trigger every second.
Suddenly the shot went off. Hautot Senior had fired. They all stopped, and saw a partridge breaking off from a covey which was rushing along at great speed to fall down into a ravine under a thick growth of brushwood. The sportsman, becoming excited, rushed forward with rapid strides, thrusting aside the briers which stood in his path, and disappeared in his turn into the thicket in quest of his game.
Almost at the same instant, a second shot was heard.
“Ha! ha! the rascal!” exclaimed M. Bermont, “he will unearth a hare down there.”
They all waited, with their eyes riveted on the heap of branches through which their gaze failed to penetrate.
The notary, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, shouted:
“Have you got them?”
Hautot Senior made no response.
Then César, turning toward the keeper, said to him:
“Just go and assist him, Joseph. We must keep walking in a straight line. We’ll wait.”
And Joseph, an old stump of a man, lean and knotty, all of whose joints formed protuberances, proceeded at an easy pace down the ravine, searching at every opening through which a passage could be effected with the cautiousness of a fox. Then, suddenly, he cried:
“Oh! come! come! an unfortunate thing has occurred.”
They all hurried forward, plunging through the briers.
The elder Hautot, who had fallen on his side, in a fainting condition, kept both his hands over his stomach, from which flowed down upon the grass through the linen vest torn by the lead, long streamlets of blood. As he was laying down his gun, in order to seize the partridge within reach of him, he had let the firearm fall, and the second discharge, going off with the shock, had torn open his entrails. They drew him out of the trench; they removed his clothes and they saw a frightful wound, through which the intestines came out. Then, after having bandaged him the best way they could, they brought him back to his own house, and awaited the doctor, who had been sent for, as well as a priest.
When the doctor arrived, he gravely shook his head, and, turning toward young Hautot, who was sobbing on a chair:
“My poor boy,” said he, “this does not look well.”
But, when the dressing was finished, the wounded man moved his fingers, opened his mouth, then his eyes, cast around him troubled, haggard glances, then appeared to search about in his memory, to recollect, to understand, and he murmured:
“Ah! good God! this has done for me!”
The doctor held his hand.
“Why no, why no, some days of rest merely – it will be nothing.”
Hautot returned:
“It has done for me! My stomach is split open! I know it well.”
Then, all of a sudden:
“I want to talk to the son, if I have the time.”
Hautot Junior, in spite of himself, shed tears, and kept repeating like a little boy:
“P’pa, p’pa, poor p’pa!”
But the father, in a firmer tone:
“Come! stop crying – this is not the time for it. I have to talk to you. Sit down there quite close to me. It will be quickly done, and I shall be more calm. As for the rest of you, kindly give me one minute.”
They all went out, leaving the father and son face to face.
As soon as they were alone:
“Listen, son! you are twenty-four years; one can say things like this to you. And then there is not such mystery about these matters as we import into them. You know well that your mother has been seven years dead, isn’t that so? and that I am not more than forty-five years myself, seeing that I got married at nineteen? Is not that true?”
The son faltered:
“Yes, it is true.”
“So then your mother has been seven years dead, and I have remained a widower. Well! a man like me cannot remain without a wife at thirty-eight, isn’t that true?”
The son replied:
“Yes, it is true.”
The father, out of breath, quite pale, and his face contracted with suffering, went on:
“God! what pain I feel! Well, you understand. Man is not made to live alone, but I did not want to take a successor to your mother, since I promised her not to do so. Then – you understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“So, I kept a young girl at Rouen, Rue d’Eperlan 18, in the third story, the second door, – I tell you all this, don’t forget, – but a young girl, who has been very nice to me, loving, devoted, a true woman, eh? You comprehend, my lad?”
“Yes, father.”
“So then, if I am carried off, I owe something to her, something substantial, that will place her in a safe position. You understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“I tell you that she is an honest girl, and that, but for you, and the remembrance of your mother, and again but for the house in which we three lived, I would have brought her here, and then married her, for certain – listen – listen, my lad. I might have made a will – I haven’t done so. I did not wish to do so – for it is not necessary to write down things – things of this sort – it is too hurtful to the legitimate children – and then it embroils everything – it ruins everyone! Look you, the stamped paper, there’s no need of it – never make use of it. If I am rich, it is because I have not made waste of what I have during my own life. You understand, my son?”
“Yes, father.”
“Listen again – listen well to me! So then, I have made no will – I did not desire to do so – and then I knew what you were; you have a good heart; you are not niggardly, not too near, in any way; I said to myself that when my end approached I would tell you all about it, and that I would beg of you not to forget the girl. And then listen again! When I am gone, make your way to the place at once – and make such arrangements that she may not blame my memory. You have plenty of means. I leave it to you – I leave you enough. Listen! You won’t find her at home every day in the week. She works at Madame Moreau’s in the Rue Beauvoisine. Go there on a Thursday. That is the day she expects me. It has been my day for the past six years. Poor little thing! she will weep! – I say all this to you because I have known you so well, my son. One does not tell these things in public either to the notary or to the priest. They happen – everyone knows that – but they are not talked about, save in case of necessity. Then there is no outsider in the secret, nobody except the family, because the family consists of one person alone. You understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, father.”
“Do you swear it?”
“Yes, father.”
“I beg of you, I implore of you, so do not forget. I bind you to it.”
“No, father.”
“You will go yourself. I want you to make sure of everything.”
“Yes, father.”
“And, then, you will see – you will see what she will explain to you. As for me, I can say no more to you. You have vowed to do it.”
“Yes, father.”
“That’s good, my son. Embrace me. Farewell. I am going to break up, I’m sure. Tell them they may come in.”
Young Hautot embraced his father, groaning while he did so; then, always docile, he opened the door, and the priest appeared in a white surplice, carrying the holy oils.
But the dying man had closed his eyes and he refused to open them again, he refused to answer, he refused to show, even by a sign, that he understood.
He had spoken enough, this man; he could speak no more. Besides he now felt his heart calm; he wanted to die in peace. What need had he to make a confession to the deputy of God, since he had just done so to his son, who constituted his own family?
He received the last rites, was purified and absolved, in the midst of his friends and his servants on their bended knees, without any movement of his face indicating that he still lived.
He expired about midnight, after four hours’ convulsive movements, which showed that he must have suffered dreadfully in his last moments.